5 ms·

I appreciate your comment and what you're trying to do. I guess I still can't picture how Cruise will achieve the balance between convenience and awareness. Le

I appreciate your comment and what you're trying to do. I guess I still can't picture how Cruise will achieve the balance between convenience and awareness. Let's say you're a teenager using Cruise to keep your car within the white lines on a 5-hour, highway road trip. The device is capable of steering the car this way on your behalf. In that situation, do you stare at the white lines for 5 hours without touching the steering wheel? Or do you text and talk to your friends? What compels you to be just as vigilant about steering and being aware of your surroundings?

altcognito 12y ago
I agree, but the guy I drove next to reading a magazine this morning wasn't doing a terribly good job staying in the white lines this morning either.
- scintill76 12y ago
  So you'd rather his car automatically keep him in between the lines, so that he feels even more safe and complacent about reading his magazine, and rear-ends you later when you end up in front of him and have to brake suddenly? I don't think I would. I think that's the point of the naysayers in this sub-thread. Doing X% of driving for bad drivers, might just make them even worse at the remaining (100-X)% of driving.
  - SoftwareMaven 12y ago
    But the sensors and actuators that are keeping him in his lane would surely fire the brakes far faster and harder than he would while reading his magazine. If all the tech does is keep you in your lane, it's certainly dangerous, but I seriously doubt that's what they are building.
    - scintill76 12y ago
      Fair enough; I believe they do include this, or maybe it comes standard with the car. Still, should we be "enabling" bad driving? Are these systems actually capable of letting people safely read while they "drive"? Does a driver have a right to do that? Is it prudent? Who is morally/legally responsible when something goes wrong and damage is done? I guess as always, we'll figure it out as we go, but I'm not the only one who's a bit nervous.
      - SoftwareMaven 12y ago
        Playing with phones, shaving, applying makeup, dozing off, etc., are all common. I ride a motorcycle. I'm dreaming of the day when technology makes those thing immaterial to the safety profile of a ton of metal moving at 70mph.
    - danielweber 12y ago
      But the sensors and actuators that are keeping him in his lane would surely fire the brakes far faster and harder than he would while reading his magazine. In fact, since human reaction time is on the order of 200ms, the car could likely see what's going on, double-check, and then hit the brakes before he noticed what was going on, even if he were paying rapt attention and expecting you to slam on the brakes. What is the reaction time of these systems? There are papers on the Internet but they are behind paywalls (that I could probably get through if I were an automotive engineer).
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    > and rear-ends you later when you end up in front of him and have to brake suddenly? All major car brands have their version of automatic braking already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system
scintill76 12y ago
I'd say even if you're trying to be a good driver in this situation, your eyes are going to "glaze over" after 1 hour of staring at lines and occasional other cars without using the wheel or pedals. If this is true (and I'll grant it's a fairly big "if"), then this product would effectively impair the driver even more! Are we really that confident that the technology is good enough to lower crash/injury rates, even with zoned-out drivers? Perhaps it's trading one type of crash, for other crashes that are less harmful overall, but do we know? I'd heard of this kind of fatigue before, and just now pulled up an article abstract[0] in search results. It says "analytical results indicated that 80 min was the safe limit for monotonous highway driving." Highway driving would be even more monotonous with this product. I'l grant that this may not be very solid scientific citation and reasoning here, but it seems like nearly common sense, that a driver can't remain alert for hours on end with a computer doing all his work. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938408000681?np=y https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003193840...
- SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
  I have a three-hour drive I make twice a week. I can second the motion of "glazed-over" eyes. But let me tell you: When the "collision avoidance alarm" fired mistakenly once, I was VERY AWAKE for the next half hour. Assuming the sensors are good, and that they include failsafes that will let you know right away when they AREN'T working, it absolutely would be a net positive to have something else watch during the "boring" times and then let out a loud "Red Alert!" buzz as soon as something unexpected came along. So no, I don't think the driver would be "impaired even more," at least not if the sensors worked well enough to throw an alarm if something unexpected happened. A set of sensors on top of a car should have a better view of the surroundings than a human, and wouldn't suffer from that kind of fatigue at all. More, the human is not going to be hypnotized by the road if they aren't actively driving. As a passenger my eyes frequently check out the scenery; as a driver you're forced to watch the road nearly 100% of the time. P.S. in my drive, I tend to pull over at the halfway point, so after about 90 minutes. And last night that did feel like about 10-15 minutes too long.
  - prawn 12y ago

altcognito 12y ago

I agree, but the guy I drove next to reading a magazine this morning wasn't doing a terribly good job staying in the white lines this morning either.

scintill76 12y ago
So you'd rather his car automatically keep him in between the lines, so that he feels even more safe and complacent about reading his magazine, and rear-ends you later when you end up in front of him and have to brake suddenly? I don't think I would. I think that's the point of the naysayers in this sub-thread. Doing X% of driving for bad drivers, might just make them even worse at the remaining (100-X)% of driving.
- SoftwareMaven 12y ago
  But the sensors and actuators that are keeping him in his lane would surely fire the brakes far faster and harder than he would while reading his magazine. If all the tech does is keep you in your lane, it's certainly dangerous, but I seriously doubt that's what they are building.
  - scintill76 12y ago
    Fair enough; I believe they do include this, or maybe it comes standard with the car. Still, should we be "enabling" bad driving? Are these systems actually capable of letting people safely read while they "drive"? Does a driver have a right to do that? Is it prudent? Who is morally/legally responsible when something goes wrong and damage is done? I guess as always, we'll figure it out as we go, but I'm not the only one who's a bit nervous.
    - SoftwareMaven 12y ago
      Playing with phones, shaving, applying makeup, dozing off, etc., are all common. I ride a motorcycle. I'm dreaming of the day when technology makes those thing immaterial to the safety profile of a ton of metal moving at 70mph.
  - danielweber 12y ago
    But the sensors and actuators that are keeping him in his lane would surely fire the brakes far faster and harder than he would while reading his magazine. In fact, since human reaction time is on the order of 200ms, the car could likely see what's going on, double-check, and then hit the brakes before he noticed what was going on, even if he were paying rapt attention and expecting you to slam on the brakes. What is the reaction time of these systems? There are papers on the Internet but they are behind paywalls (that I could probably get through if I were an automotive engineer).
- kalleboo 12y ago
  > and rear-ends you later when you end up in front of him and have to brake suddenly? All major car brands have their version of automatic braking already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system

scintill76 12y ago

I'd say even if you're trying to be a good driver in this situation, your eyes are going to "glaze over" after 1 hour of staring at lines and occasional other cars without using the wheel or pedals. If this is true (and I'll grant it's a fairly big "if"), then this product would effectively impair the driver even more! Are we really that confident that the technology is good enough to lower crash/injury rates, even with zoned-out drivers? Perhaps it's trading one type of crash, for other crashes that are less harmful overall, but do we know? I'd heard of this kind of fatigue before, and just now pulled up an article abstract[0] in search results. It says "analytical results indicated that 80 min was the safe limit for monotonous highway driving." Highway driving would be even more monotonous with this product. I'l grant that this may not be very solid scientific citation and reasoning here, but it seems like nearly common sense, that a driver can't remain alert for hours on end with a computer doing all his work. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938408000681?np=y https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003193840...

SomeCallMeTim 12y ago
I have a three-hour drive I make twice a week. I can second the motion of "glazed-over" eyes. But let me tell you: When the "collision avoidance alarm" fired mistakenly once, I was VERY AWAKE for the next half hour. Assuming the sensors are good, and that they include failsafes that will let you know right away when they AREN'T working, it absolutely would be a net positive to have something else watch during the "boring" times and then let out a loud "Red Alert!" buzz as soon as something unexpected came along. So no, I don't think the driver would be "impaired even more," at least not if the sensors worked well enough to throw an alarm if something unexpected happened. A set of sensors on top of a car should have a better view of the surroundings than a human, and wouldn't suffer from that kind of fatigue at all. More, the human is not going to be hypnotized by the road if they aren't actively driving. As a passenger my eyes frequently check out the scenery; as a driver you're forced to watch the road nearly 100% of the time. P.S. in my drive, I tend to pull over at the halfway point, so after about 90 minutes. And last night that did feel like about 10-15 minutes too long.
- prawn 12y ago